Why IMF chief had to walk the 'perp walk'

It's April 28, an icy Thursday afternoon, and Dominique Strauss-Kahn is ensconced at a restaurant table with a journalist from Liberation, the legendary Parisian newspaper founded by Jean-Paul Sartre.

The lunch date, in an eatery in the French capital's second arrondissement, had been made in secret: the IMF chief and presidential hopeful had been in town all week from Washington and the chat was to be held ''en toute confidentialite''.

Cordial and smiling, DSK as he is known in France, nevertheless appeared cautious, suspicious even. As he extended his hand towards the journalist waiting for him, he asked if he was carrying a mobile telephone.

Strauss-Kahn explained that he carries two: one for IMF business, encrypted for security, and the other for personal business. The personal one, he said, had been left at reception as a precaution against the

Advertisement

''strong feeling'' that he was under surveillance, fearful of dirty tricks by the French Interior Ministry.

Over the next couple of hours, the IMF chief - without confirming formally or on the record - made very clear to the left-leaning Liberation that he was on the path to formally declaring his candidacy for the French presidency. An informal pact with the Socialist Party's leader, Martine Aubry, would see her withdraw her own foray for the top job and so would begin the long - ''too long'' in his view - campaign to become President de la Republique Francais.

IMF Chief Strauss-Kahn in court

IMF Chief Dominique Strauss- Khan faces Manhattan Criminal Court two days after he was arrested on a plane and accused of trying to rape a Manhattan hotel chambermaid.

Then the bombshell, if only in hindsight.

Without prompting or questions from the reporter, DSK proceeded to outline the three obstacles he foresaw in his run for France's top job: ''Le fric, les femmes et ma judeite.'' (Money, women and my being a Jew.)

Strauss-Kahn, however, chose to begin his explanation with the woman problem: ''Yes, I love women … et alors? [So what?] Over many years people speak of photos of giant orgies … but I have yet to see them emerge. So, let's see them. Bring it on!'' he told Liberation.

Then he recalls a chance meeting with Nicolas Sarkozy, at a urinal during an international summit when he asked his political rival to stop the forays into his personal life. Continuing the story, he veers into the imaginary, portraying himself as a potential victim of a political set-up saying: ''A woman [who claims to be raped by him in a car park] and who has been promised €500,000 or €1 million to invent such a story.''

Strauss-Kahn's prescient - and now chilling - observations less than a month ago encapsulate the polarised reaction of the French people, and its media and political class, to the bombshell arrest for attempted rape on Sunday of one of their leading global figures.

While President Sarkozy apparently has expressed private delight at the fall of his most serious political rival, his office has been restrained in public.

Le Monde reported that a spokesman for the French government, Francois Baroin, had asked for ''extraordinary prudence'', telling the television station France2 there were two issues that must be respected: the legal process and respect for the presumption of innocence.

The so-called ''perp walk'' - in which the accused in the US are paraded in handcuffs for the media - has shocked France, perhaps even more than the alleged crime for which he is now in custody. Blogs by both pundits and observers were outraged by Strauss-Kahn's treatment at the hands of the New York police, with many questioning the effect of images of the IMF head, unshaven and dishevelled, on potential jurors.

Liberation has yet to publish the full interview but has provided a precis of the confidential lunch in which DSK also dismissed the problem of ''le fric'' - his wealth and money - and its clash with Socialist ideals, saying it was the personal fortune of is wife, Anne Sinclair, a journalist and heiress.

On his being Jewish, Strauss-Kahn noted that this was already being used against him: a comment he made in 1991 to the Jewish Tribune - that every morning he wakes and asks himself how he can be ''helpful to the state of Israel'' - has gone viral on the web. This had been ''idiocy'', he told Liberation, ''but I did not contradict it on the spot''.

Three weeks after his extraordinary chat with a friendly French newspaper, the IMF chief is behind bars in New York's notorious Rikers Island prison, and due to appear in court again on Friday.

His lawyers say he has a cast iron alibi - lunch with his daughter, a graduate student at Columbia University, in New York, on the very day of the alleged rape.

The world - not just France - awaits the next instalment with bated breath.